Insert witty quote here

 So usually if I can't think of an appropriate (and by that, I mean witty or sarcastic) post title myself, I go to trusty Google and find one. But I am here to tell you that witty and/or sarcastic quotes about photography (the subject of this post) do not seem to exist. There is a lot of touchy-feely stuff about beauty and light and "finding the secret hidden within every person," but not really any material I could actually use. And I've already gone the "worth a thousand words" route in my earlier entry A picture: Worth a thousand words, or merely a reminder of bad hairstyles, teenage desperation, and more than a few body issues? And so, I ended up with "Insert witty quote here." Hey, every title can't be award-winning (well, actually none of mine have yet to win a award really).

As I said before, this post is all about pictures. My friends and family know that I love taking pictures. Some of them hate me for it, and so I have a whole collection of pictures (mainly of my brother and sister) that just consist of a hand in front of a face. I try to tell them that they'll be grateful that we have these pictures when we're old and gray and have nothing better to do than reminisce about the good old days, but it seems to fall on deaf ears. Anyway, I was looking through my digital picture files (that are of course categorized by event, and in some cases sub-categorized by year...yes, I am a freak), and I noticed that I have a lot of pretty similar pictures that are just taken in different years. You know, like family pictures at Christmas or birthdays. Or in the case of my best friend and me, pretty much every single event ever. It was pretty cool to look at the different years and see how I've lost weight. I thought I would share a few here. I think it is interesting to point out that most of the before pictures are actually from about a full year before I started losing weight. I wasn't even at my heaviest in these. The reason I used these pictures is because there are very few pictures of me at all from about a year before I started losing to about 3 months into my journey because the last thing I wanted was a visual reminder of how big I was becoming.

Smoothies May 2011

Smoothies May 2013 (yes, in EXACTLY the same place)

Family pic December 2011

 

 

Family pic June 2013

With my cat, Earl August 2011

With Earl August 2013

My best friend Randi's birthday May 2011

Randi's birthday May 2013

Fourth of July 2011 (why did I make the pom-poms look they are attached to my boobs?)

Fourth of July 2013 (where I look slightly manic)

As you can see, 2012 is pretty much missing (as far as pictures of me go) from my picture files. That is, until my birthday in September when I finally felt comfortable enough to get in front of the camera again after losing around 50 lbs. I guess I'll have to post a birthday before and after shot next month. However, it may show me looking forlorn, as this will be my very last birthday in my 20's. I'm not quite sure how that happened. But to be honest, although I do have a little trepidation about reaching my 30's soon, the bigger part of me is just ready to make my 29th year the best yet!